I saw Watchmen in the first row of a packed theater, my face feeling like it was shoved against the screen, as the sound was so loud that it felt like it had crawled inside my brain and was screaming inside my skull.
Watchmen probably should have never been made. The graphic novel by writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons is so far-reaching, filled with so many nuances and a necessary understanding of the history of American comic books that at times, it can feel obtuse. How do you make it into a two-hour blockbuster? Directors Terry Gilliam, David Hayter, Darren Aronofsky and Paul Greengrass all were going to make the movie but no one could agree on a budget.
Enter Zack Snyder, who had made another comic book movie, 300, and was able to get this made. Yet even when you watch the ultimate cut, which adds the Tales of the Black Freighter into the narrative as it was in the original graphic novel, making this 3 hours and 35 minutes long, it still feels like it’s missing something. That it’s all rather loud sound and fury and you wonder not “Who watches the Watchmen?” but “Why am I watching the Watchmen?”
Snyder misses a lot of the small moments of the comic. One of them is a drunken Comedian telling members of President for Life Richard Nixon’s staff that he had killed Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein before they could write about Watergate and been the gunman who committed the assassination of John F. Kennedy on Nixon’s orders. That said, in that scene, it’s left up to the reader to determine if the Comedian is either wasted, literally being a comedian and telling a dark joke that only he finds humorous or trying to look like he means something when confronted by the god that is Dr. Manhattan and his possible daughter, Silk Spectre II. In Snyder’s film, during the credits, we see the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) with a smoking gun standing on the grassy knoll as Dylan’s “The Time’s They Are A-Changin'” blares on the soundtrack, less needledrop than sledgehammer.
The film starts, like the comic, with the Comedian being attacked in his apartment and thrown to the street below. Again, as in the inspiration, the hero Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley, one of the bright spots in this movie) begins to investigate the murder, which leads him to other heroes, such as the omnipotent Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), Silk Spectre II (Malin Åkerman), Ozymandias (Matthew Goode) and Nit Owl II (Patrick Wilson). Seeing as how this was 12 issues of a graphic novel as well as back-up features that expanded the universe — and revealed key secrets when explored — those are enough characters to get into without also going into the past, The Minutemen, who are Silk Spectre (Carla Gugino), the aforementioned Comedian, Nite Owl (Stephen McHattie), Dollar Bill (Dan Payne), Mothman (Niall Matter), The Silhouette (Apollonia Vanova), Hooded Justice (Glenn Ennis) and Captain Metropolis (Darryl Scheelar).
Meanwhile, at the funeral for the Comedian, Edgar Jacobi (Matt Frewer, also great) is there. A former villain, he’s interrogated by Rorschach and reveals that The Comedian came to him one night, obsessed with an island he’d found and a list of people connected to Dr. Manhattan with Jacobi’s name on it. At the same time, that list is revealed on a talk show with the god that is Dr. Manhattan, who escapes Earth and reflects on his origin on Mars.
This allows Silk Spectre II — aka Laurie Jupiter — and Nite Owl II — Daniel Dreiberg — to connect. Laurie has been the government-kept lover of Manhattan but now with him gone, she’s expendable. They start to wear their masks again, ending up as lovers and breaking Nite Owl II’s former partner Rorschach from prison with a mission: to investigate Ozymandias. At the same time, Manhattan teleports Laurie to Mars, where she argues for mankind being worth saving. He’s swayed when he learns that the Comedian is her father, despite the fact that he sexually assaulted her mother, the original Silk Spectre, who remains in love with him all these years later.
When they confront the former superhero turned CEO Adrian Veidt, he reveals his plan: to stop war by making Dr. Manhattan the enemy of humanity, killing 15 million people by setting off the nuclear reactors that he and Manhattan have built together. This ruse will stop nuclear war, so everyone agrees, other than Rorschach, who says “Never compromise. Not even in the face of Armageddon.” He’s blasted to atoms by Dr. Manhattan, who leaves for another galaxy, the heroes all complicit in a lie that will do more to save the world than wearing a mask and punching a bad guy.
Dave Gibbons became an adviser but cranky Alan Moore has refused to have his name attached to any film adaptations of his work, saying “There are things that we did with Watchmen that could only work in a comic, and were indeed designed to show off things that other media can’t.”
I’ll say something nice for this movie. Writer David Hayter came up with a cleaner ending that doesn’t rip off “The Architects of Fear” from The Outer Limits. That said, there’s no reason now for the Black Freighter or the pirate comics to be important, or the island, as everyone sent there was creating the squid monster that Veidt teleported to New York City in the comic and…see, this is too big to fit into a movie. The fact that Moore took this ending caused editor Len Wein to quit the comic, saying “I kept telling him, “Be more original, Alan, you’ve got the capability, do something different, not something that’s already been done!” And he didn’t seem to care enough to do that.”
So is the fact that this is commenting on the changes within the American comic book industry. DC had purchased the 1960s Charlton Comics characters. At the same time, Moore wanted to reimagine another older comic, as he had done with Miracleman. MLJ Comics’ — the publisher of Archie — Mighty Crusaders seemed like a good fit, so he wrote a murder mystery that started with the dead body of The Shield. He wanted to play with the concept of four color heroes, so it would have the shock and surprise value when you saw what the reality of these characters was.”
Moore learned of the Charlton purchase and sent a pitch, Who Killed the Peacemaker? to DC managing editor Dick Giordano. After the acquisition of Charlton’s Action Hero line, DC intended to use their upcoming Crisis on Infinite Earths series to introduce the Charlton heroes to their mainline universe. As Moore would say, “DC realized their expensive characters would end up either dead or dysfunctional.”
Giordano convinced him to make his own versions, so Nightshade became Silk Spectre, The Question would be Rorschach, Peacemaker now The Comedian, Blue Beetle became Nite Owl, Captain Atom transformed into Dr. Manhattan and Peter Cannon Thunderbolt was now Ozymandias. They have gone from the happy adventuring days of comics to the grim and gritty graphic novels and been changed by the experience, something that never comes through in Snyder’s film. Sure, it look cool, but a lot of it is slow motion masturbatory super hero music video, exactly the opposite of the work that it is based on.
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